Brown University Caves Under Activist Outrage After Publishing Research Suggesting Being Transgender Is A Result Of ‘Peer Contagion’

3:14 PM 08/29/2018 | Education

Grace Carr | Reporter

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Brown University removed a news story it had published about research suggesting that young people’s decisions to transition from one sex to another is influenced by their peers and social media after angering the transgender community.

The university published an article about behavioral and social sciences professor Lisa Littman’s research, “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults,” revealing that students and young people considering transitioning might be affected by their peers, The Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Littman conducted her study by posting a 90-question survey on three websites where parents had reported rapid onsets of gender dysphoria in their children. The responses were recorded anonymously and 256 parent-completed surveys met the study’s standards. In nearly 40 percent of the friendship groups described, the majority of the members became “transgender-identified.”

Over 60 percent of the transgender adolescents had been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder or neurodevelopmental disability prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria, according to the study’s results.

After the study was published Aug. 16, the university received feedback from the transgender community about the research and its intentions.

“Community members express[ed] concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community,” Brown University School of Public Health Dean Bess H. Marcus said, according to The Telegraph. Marcus also said university members had complained.

Littman refers to “social and peer contagion” in the study, defining the phrase as “cluster outbreaks of gender dysphoria occurring in pre-existing groups of friends and increased exposure to social media/internet preceding a child’s announcement of a transgender identity raises the possibility of social and peer contagion.”

“Brown and the School of Public Health strongly value academic freedom and support our researchers in their pursuit of knowledge and discovery. We are deeply committed to free inquiry and also support rigorous debate to advance understanding of important and complex issues,” university spokesman Brian Clark told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday.

“We feel strongly that researchers have a responsibility to be vigilant in research design and analysis, especially when there are implications for the health of the communities at the center of our research … It was this responsibility — not the subject of the research — that informed the decision to remove the article,” Clark added.

The university maintains the study’s research design and methodology were flawed, and that removing the article from distribution is the “most responsible course of action,” Clark told TheDCNF.

The study was published in “PLOS One,” which noted its plans to reassess the study’s methodology based on feedback it received directly, prompting the university to remove its news story about Littman’s research.

Brown’s faculty and staff are “on the cutting edge of research on transgender populations and we fully expect that to continue to be the case moving forward,” Clark added.

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